


3:02 am

by fuck_me_barnes



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst and Feels, Ghost Stories, M/M, Psychological Horror, Psychological Torture, Suicidal Thoughts, Urban Legends, a different kind of ghost but still a ghost, angry ghosts, creepy tales, he's a ghost you'll never find him, ikiryo, j-horror, onryo, urban mythos
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-02
Updated: 2014-11-13
Packaged: 2018-02-15 20:11:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 11,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2241882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuck_me_barnes/pseuds/fuck_me_barnes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Please come get me", the familiar voice crackles through the line, and Steve nearly drops the phone.</p><p>His throat works, but he can’t get out the words for a moment. Is he crying? “Bucky? Buck? Is that…is that you?” No response but what sounds like a muffled sob. ”Bucky, where are you. Where are you. Tell me what’s around you.” Steve glances at the clock: 3:02 am.</p><p>There’s the sound of a shuddery breath, and then the line goes dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my love letter to J-horror, urban mythos, and the MCU. It started out as a series of fic prompts and...rapidly gained a life of its own, as ghost stories will often do.

"Please come get me", the familiar voice crackles through the line, and Steve nearly drops the phone.  
  
His throat works, but he can’t get out the words for a moment. Is he  _crying_? “Bucky? Buck? Is that…is that you?” No response but what sounds like a muffled sob. ”Bucky, where are you. Where are you. Tell me what’s around you.” Steve glances at the clock: 3:02 am.

There’s the sound of a shuddery breath, and then the line goes dead.

    
 

"Please come get me", the voice pleads, before a few more seconds pass.

"Bucky? I’ll come get you, just tell me where you-"

There’s a whined “ _Please_ ”, and the line goes dead again.  
  
Steve rolls over. 3:02 am.  
  
   
  


"Please come get me", whispers the voice. "Please. Please come get me. Please come get me please come pleasecomegetme p l e a s e c o m e g e t m e p l e a s e-"  
  
"This is sick, you’re  _sick_ , how did you even get this number-“  
  
” _get me_  please come  _get me_  please me  _please come_  please-“

and this time Steve is the one to hang up the phone. He doesn't need to look at the clock, he knows exactly what time it is. He rolls over and sobs into his pillow until sunrise. He does not go back to sleep.  
  
   
  
Three hours later, he’s downstairs in the training room, destroying bag after bag after bag with frantic, terrified energy, punching it with everything he's got until it explodes. Bucky.  _Please come get me._  Take my hand. Peggy.  _Please come get me._  I gotta put her in the water.  _Please come get me._  Bucky falling, the terror on his face.  _Please come get me._  
  
He hears the man come in before he sees him, but he chooses to ignore him, hoists up another bag onto the chain.   
  
"Having trouble sleeping?" Fury asks from behind him.  
  
 _Please come get me. Please come get me. Please come get me._  “I’ve been asleep for seventy years. I think I’ve gotten enough rest.”


	2. Chapter 2

The calls don’t stop after the Battle of New York, but Steve Rogers doesn't tell anyone. He doesn’t sleep much, but no one at SHIELD finds that terribly unusual. The others figure it’s a side-effect of the super-soldier serum. A bonus, a perk. He’s the only surviving recipient of it, after all, and no one knows precisely what it does or how it affects the body. Or the brain.  
  
Steve starts waking up at 3:02 am automatically, most nights, whether or not the phone rings.  
  
   
  
When the calls do come, they destroy him inside, piece by piece. Sometimes there’s sobbing. Sometimes there’s screaming. Sometimes there’s quiet, even breathing. No matter what, there’s always the same phrase:  _please come get me_.  
  
Over. And over. And over again.  
  
Sometimes Steve stays on the line, his stomach twisting itself into sick knots, trying to get something,  _anything_ , out of the voice on the other end. He tries to stay calm, ask questions.  _Where are you_.  _Are you hurt_.  _Tell me where you are_.  _I’ll come get you, Bucky_.  _I just need to know where to find you_.  
  
   
  
3:02 am: Steve hangs up.   
3:02 am: the line goes dead.  
3:02 am: Steve sobs into the phone  _stop this please stop this  
_ 3:02 am: a muffled slam like a door closing, dead air hissing.  
3:02 am: Steve pleads  _I’m sorry, Bucky, forgive me, tell me where you are_  
3:02 am: a crackle, then, after a long pause, a dial tone.  
  
Steve has changed his phone number six times in the past year.  
  
And still. The phone rings. _Please come get me._  
  
   
  
"Natasha wasn’t kidding when she said he was a ghost, was she. Sounds like an  _onryō_ to me,” Sam says with a little chuckle, leaning back in the car seat.   
  
Steve, tired and not in the mood for jokes, turns and looks blankly at him. “A what.”

"Vengeful spirit. Long, stringy black hair, pale skin, dark circles around their eyes, unfinished business over wrongs done to them in life…I don’t suppose you’ve seen any Japanese horror movies, have you? The Grudge? The Ring?" Looking at Steve’s unamused glare, he raises his right hand up in a parody of defense, keeping his left on the wheel. "You know what, nevermind. Forget I said anything."  
  
A few moments later, because he can’t help himself, Sam mutters, “Thing about these angry ghosts, though, you don’t find  _them_ , they find  _you_. Usually. I mean…okay, I’m no expert. I only took one semester of History and Culture of Japan in college.”  
  
Sighing, he turns to look at his friend. “Sam.”   
  
"Yeah, Cap?" Sam teases, smirking.  
  
Steve takes a deep breath. He hasn’t told a soul about the past year. 3:02 am. Why he doesn’t sleep. “He’s been calling me.”  
  
Sam raises one eyebrow. “ _Calling_  you? How? How long? Since we left, or…?”  
  
"Since…since I woke up. From the ice. Not every night. A lot of nights. Always at the same time. Always asks me the same thing. ‘ _Please come get me’_. But he won’t tell me where he is. Won’t say anything else. Sometimes…sometimes he’s crying. Sometimes he sounds…scared.” He scrubs his hand over his eyes, knowing how crazy this sounds.  
  
Sam’s eyes go wide. “You mean to tell me that your friend has been calling you for over a  _year_  before we ever found out that he’s alive, and you never said  _anything_ to  _anyone_ this whole time? Seriously, Steve?” He’s nearly shouting now. “How the hell did he get your number, man?”  
  
"That’s the thing, Sam, I don’t know." He shakes his head ruefully. "I’ve changed it six times."  
  
Sam goes quiet for a few minutes before saying, softly, as if to himself, “Man, I was kidding about the ghost thing. He  _can’t_  be a ghost. I kicked him in the  _head_.”  
  
   
  
3:02 am. A little motel just outside of Trenton, New Jersey.   
  
The phone rings.   
  
Steve rolls over. He reaches for the phone on autopilot, as if he’d been expecting it - which, of course, he had.   
  
Sam reaches over him, snatches it out of his hand. “Nah, man. Let me.”  
  
He taps to answer, places the phone to his ear, and is rewarded with a bloodcurdling scream, a shriek of pain and rage, at top volume.   
  
"-JESUS FUCK", Sam shouts, startled, dropping the phone. It bounces onto the bed, the scream unceasing, rising in pitch.  
  
"BUCKY? BUCK," Steve yells, grabbing for the phone, and the unholy noises abruptly stop the moment he lies a hand on it.   
  
"-getme- _ple_ -ome-g- _tme_ " the voice fades in and out, and then: dead air.


	3. Chapter 3

They arrive in New York City that afternoon, exhausted. Neither Steve nor Sam had slept since the night before. They hadn’t talked much, either. It was Steve’s idea to go to Brooklyn, thinking that Bucky might reappear in a place that he’d remember.

In truth, Steve has no idea  _what_ , or  _whom_ , Bucky remembers. If he remembered anything at all. It was a needle in a haystack, one place out of billions of places. There was still an equal chance that Bucky might go back to Kiev. To Azzano, Italy. To one of the old Hydra facilities in Austria. Steve quiety prayed that they’d finally come across him somewhere safe, somewhere near, somewhere filled with better memories. At Coney Island, maybe, or on the rooftop of their old apartment building. That he’d be okay, that he’d be the old Bucky again. Sam had told him, gently, that he shouldn’t expect that.  
  
Still, Bucky had saved him from drowning, pulled him from the Potomac - or so Steve privately believed. All he remembers for sure is the look of horror in Bucky’s eyes. The blue blankness giving way to a spark of recognition, his metal fist upraised and frozen in midair, sparks from the fire on the Helicarrier drifting down lazily and swirling around his face.  _You’re my mission,_ he had said. Then: nothing. Blackness.   
  
They’d said he’d fallen from the wreck into the river, somehow, but he had no recollection of it whasoever. Did he fall or was he pushed? Did he jump or did he slip? He would never be certain.  _Is that what it had felt like for Bucky?_  he wondered. To be told, but to not  _know_? And that was just one incident. If the information in the files Natasha gave him was correct, Bucky had been in and out of the world for the past seventy years. Stripped of his memories, awakened by Hydra only to kill, a dozen times at least. Then back to the vault to be stripped again. A battery of electroshock, benzodiazepines, anti-psychotics, and a bunch of other chemicals Steve couldn’t name. Over, and over, and over again. And now he was wandering out there alone.  _Please come get me_. 

"Yo, Cap. We’re here." Sam’s voice pulls him out of his reverie.   
  
"Oh. Hey. Thanks, Sam." Steve stretches in the seat, takes a deep breath. "Let’s go check in, and then start looking."  
  
   
  
Tony’d offered a suite of rooms in the newly rebuilt Stark Tower (now Avengers Tower, Pepper had informed them with a smirk as Tony shrugged sheepishly) for as long as they’d wanted to stay. Steve was hesitant at first to take him up on the offer, but Pepper had insisted. “It’s the most secure place in New York, and besides, I bet Tony has at least a dozen things he could use to help you find your man.”  
  
Sam had thought that sounded like the best possible option - not to mention, he pointed out with a sly grin, it was  _free_  - and so here they were. Tony proudly showing them around, showing off all the bells and whistles in the place that Steve could have cared less about, only pausing once to ask, “You coming down with something, American Dreamboat? You’re not looking so good.”  
  
Steve had smiled faintly and made some sort of bland, weak denial. Sam stared at him pointedly, but said nothing.  
  
   
  
3:02 am. Steve rolls over in bed.  
  
The next day, they canvass their old neighborhood in Brooklyn. Nothing.  
  
   
  
3:02 am. Steve rolls over in bed.   
  
They spend a day wandering around the docks where Bucky used to work, and a wider swath of Brooklyn besides. Nothing.  
  
   
  
3:02 am. Steve rolls over in bed.  
  
The phone rings. He stares at it for a moment. Finally, with shaking hands, he taps the screen to answer.  
  
"Please come get me," the voice whines plaintively on the other end, the line crackling as if the connection was bad. "Please come get me  _please come get me_ please come get me  _please_ -“  
  
"I’m here. I’m looking for you. I’m going to find you, Buck,  _please_ , you gotta tell me where you  _are_ -“   
  
There’s a creaking of metal on metal, like the hinges of a rusty gate opening, a sound like the wailing of an icy wind, the animal howl of a person in terrible pain very far away. Falling away.  _Take my hand_ , he remembers.   
  
“BUCKY!” he shouts, just as he’d shouted then, just as uselessly. The howling gets closer and louder and still Steve can’t put the phone down, horrified and frozen in place.   
  
The sound of a saw whirring, the shriek of agony increasing, the sound of that metal arm calibrating, a screeching of pure anguish, it’s so  _loud_ , and then it stops, abruptly, as if someone has pulled the needle from a record, scaring Steve worse than all the noise.

He can hear breathing. Deep, fast, almost panting.  _Hyperventilating_ , Steve thinks stupidly. “…Bucky?” he tries, his voice breaking.  
  
” _t h i s w a s y o u r f a u l t_ ”, says a voice in a hissing whisper from somewhere behind him, and Steve leaps to his feet with a scream in his throat. It’s standing there in the darkness, the figure, long black hair obscuring its face, its eyes bottomless black shadows.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your kind comments and compliments! I'm so glad this story is being enjoyed by so many. I'll be posting chapter updates as often as I'm able!

Steve has the presence of mind, after a horrified moment, to pick up his shield, and he hurls it at the figure with all his strength. There's a piteous gasping shriek, and the figure vanishes, dissipating like smoke as the shield lands solidly in the large, floor-to-ceiling mirror. Glass shatters everywhere, raining down with a crash. He stands there, wide-eyed and breathing hard, looking through the darkness for the where the thing went. He nearly jumps out of his skin a second later, when there's a frantic banging on the door.   
  
"STEVE. STEVE! OPEN UP, MAN!" Sam yells on the other side. Steve backs up slowly towards the door, and turns on the light. There's nothing there, the room is completely empty save for him and his pounding heart.

    
  
"Okay. New rule. Going forward, we always share a room at night." Sam stirs a third sugar into his coffee. "You got it? I don't know what the hell's going on anymore, man, but this is some fucked-up shit, right here, and I don't want you to deal with it alone anymore." 

Steve rubs his eyes blearily. "Fair." The lights in the diner are too bright, the glare harsh. He's exhausted. Some nights after the phone calls he'd been able to lull himself into a fitful doze for an hour at least, but after last night's episode, it'd be impossible. He's not sure if he's ever going to be able to sleep.  
  
"Second rule," Sam says as he refill's Steve's coffee from the carafe on the table, "I'm not going to be held financially responsible for any room damage caused by a vibranium shield. I'm gonna let you explain that one to Stark." 

"Tony can afford it," Steve sighs, and takes another bite of his pancakes, even though he really wasn't hungry at all. "He could probably just have his robots..." He stops. "Hang on. His robots. JARVIS. The AI's everywhere in the building, right?"  
  
Sam catches on immediately. "So...why not ask JARVIS who was in the Tower last night?"

They pay the bill, and return back to the Tower as quickly as possible.

 

" _My apologies, sir, but I've reviewed the data, and I must confirm that there were no unauthorized persons present in the Tower last night._ " JARVIS sounds, as ever, unflappably cool and polite.

Steve tries not to think about how unnerving it is to talk to disembodied voices in his room for the second time in 24 hours. "Okay. What about in my suite specifically?"  
  
" _Data shows only two heartbeats detected over the course of the evening: yours, and Mr. Wilson's. No one other than yourselves entered or exited the suite for the duration of your stay_ ," he replies after a pause.

Sam and Steve look at one another. "Huh," shrugs Steve, at a loss. "What about..." he starts, but JARVIS breaks in.

" _Pardon my interruption. There's an incoming call on the line for Captain Rogers. I'm told that it's urgent. A Miss Romanoff?_ "  
  
  
  

When he accepts the call, Natasha starts talking without pleasantries or preamble. "I'm sending you some encrypted files that I think you should take a look at. Seems as if the ones I handed you last month concerning your friend were only the tip of the iceberg. There's some new information in there about the nature of those experiments they were doing to him. This goes all the way back to the forties." There's the briefest of pauses, and then she adds, "Be careful, Steve. When I told you that you might not want to pull on that string...that was _before_ I had found all these other documents. This...is worse. I'll be in touch."

 Before he can answer, Natasha disconnects the call. 

   
  
An hour into accessing the files on Hydra's Winter Soldier project, Steve can go no further. He runs to the bathroom and throws up. Leaning over the toilet, he brushes the tears from his eyes. It was worse, so much worse, than he'd ever expected. When he'd rescued Bucky from the Hydra base in Austria, he'd known that it was no sick bay, but he hadn't had time to contemplate what they _had_ been doing to him in there. Bucky had refused to speak of it afterwards in their remaining time together, and he hadn't wanted to press the issue, so he'd never asked. According to the file, the experiments had begun there. In the facility, Bucky had received a bastardized version of the same super-soldier serum that flowed through Steve's veins, which, Zola's lab notes proudly stated, had been the main reason he'd been able to survive the fall from the train.   
  
After they had recovered Bucky, though...that was the worst part. From what he'd read, a great deal of Hydra's experimentation on him had involved the nature of pain. They'd used him to test on and potentially alter the limits of the human body, to be sure; but more importantly, Hydra scientists wanted to know what would happen to the mind and the spirit while experiencing intense trauma. They tortured Bucky physically, mentally, and emotionally, in hundreds of ways for quite some time before fleeing the crumbling Reich and sheltering him with the Soviets. They'd amputated his damaged arm without so much as a topical anesthetic, and kept him awake to watch it. He'd also been kept conscious during the 23-hour-long surgery to connect the metal arm to his body and wire it into his central nervous system and brain.

There were pictures, and a few grainy video clips, and the video was what had finally compelled Steve to become sick to his stomach. Bucky's screaming echoing through the room, his blue eyes glazed with pain and fear, as the bone saw whirred in black and white. When he'd pass out from the agony, one of the Hydra scientists would revive him with smelling salts and slaps to make sure he was "experiencing his transformation".

From the other room, his best friend's horrifying shrieking died down as Arnim Zola's German-accented voice gleefully resonated from the screen: "Amputation of limb and cybernetic enhancement installation complete. Beginning of procedure: four-oh-nine am, February the fifteenth, nineteen-forty-five. Conclusion of procedure: three-oh-two am, February the sixteenth, nineteen-forty-five."  
  
Steve sits up with a start. _Conclusion of procedure: three-oh-two am_.

 

The phone rings.


	5. Chapter 5

Steve stares at the phone, ringing in his hand. _Sam_ , it says on the caller ID. His entire body flushes with relief as he taps to answer, his heart still hammering frantically in his chest.

"Hey," he says in what he hopes is a normal tone of voice.

"Steve. You sound like shit. You been reading those files Natasha sent you?" It's less of a question and more of a statement. His tone says that Sam already knows he has, that nothing could have prevented him from immediately diving in, trying to find out what happened to his friend. That he'd be spending the majority of his free time looking for clues as to where Bucky might have taken himself.

When Steve doesn't immediately respond to that, Sam continues. "Yeah. Thought so. Listen, I'm going to pick up some Chinese food, and then I'm coming back. Don't read any more of those files till I get there."  
  
"There...there's video, too."   
  
Steve can hear Sam's sharp intake of breath over the line. "Don't touch those either."  
  
   
   
  
Half an hour later, they're eating beef and broccoli and kung pao chicken out of white takeout boxes in the living room of the suite at the Tower. Steve feels like he's going to jump out of his skin. Instead of being tired, he's jittery from constant adrenaline spikes. Last time he felt that way, he was on the front with the Howling Commandos...with Bucky at his side. He tries to push the thought away, and puts down the takeout box.  
  
Bucky falls away from him, in his mind, his hand extended out uselessly as he screamed and flailed. _Take my hand_. How he had sobbed that night, wrecked up in the shell of the old tavern, trying to get drunk but failing. He couldn't drink fast enough. And meanwhile, Bucky was lying in the snow - hurt, but alive. Hurt, but alive, and recovered by Hydra to torture and experiment on. 

 _Please come get me_.

He wasn't hungry anymore.

 

Steve puts on the video for Sam. "I already watched it. I can't do it twice." He walks out of the room, leaving Sam to watch alone.

 

Zola's face flickers upon the screen in grainy black and white.  _"The perfect soldier is the perfect weapon. The perfect soldier is one who obeys orders without question, who is efficient, who is given missions to complete and does so flawlessly. The perfect soldier, therefore, is simply a tool in the hands of its masters. A means to an end. What we hope to accomplish, with Project Winter Soldier, is to create the perfect soldier and mold him into the perfect weapon. Our initial subjects were," he sniffs disdainfully, "_ failures _. All_ men _. All weak, in the end, with human failings and human flaws, despite our enhancements and despite their training. And so, we had to refine our approach. We thought, how can we improve these men? What could we do to ensure their perfection, and remove their baser natures? Our conclusion was simple. They all had souls. But a knife has no soul. A gun has no soul. A bomb has no soul. They are simply weapons, tools in a box to be used. And so, indeed, must our soldier be, if he were to be truly efficient."_

  
The phone rings.

 

_"We know that a man can live a long and healthy life when his appendix is removed, or a gallbladder. A man can even lose a kidney or a lung, with little significant damage to his long-term health. The surgeries are fairly simple. But how could we go about excising a human soul? That question is far more difficult to answer, but I am confident we can accomplish it."_

  
The phone rings.  
  
  
The audio crackles and hisses. _"What we are hoping to learn, in this experiment, is the nature of the soul - and how best we can facilitate its extraction. Initial experimentation subjects were dosed with scopolamine, a drug known for its mind control properties, as well as being a potent antidepressant and antianxiety medication, making the subjects malleable and facilitating memory loss. However, large doses of this drug resulted, oftentimes, in hallucinations, respiratory failure, brain damage, and death. This makes it less than ideal for long-term projects. It was important to us that the physical condition of the subject remain at optimal health."_

The phone rings.  
  
  
 _"Recently, we were fortunate to receive a test subject into our laboratories who was the most ideal candidate yet. A healthy male, age 26, with extensive military training, who was privileged to receive a dosage of an ubermensch serum of my own design. His healing capabilities and physical strength were triple that of a normal human. However, he was returned to us...damaged. Thus it is only natural that we should proceed to enhance him through the best technology we possess."_  
  
  
The phone rings.  
  
  
 _"Our intention is to push him to the physical, mental, and emotional limits of pain, in order to discover the limits of the soul." The camera's fuzzy gaze shifts over to an unconscious man on an operating table. "Awaken Sergeant Barnes and let the procedure begin."_ Zola smiles, and the video stops abruptly, static blaring through the TV speakers.

 

 

The phone rings.

The phone rings.

The phone rings.   
  
   
  
  
"Steve? You need to get down here." Natasha's voice is tight, controlled. "I've found him. But you need to come. Now."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So glad for all the great comments and encouragement! Next chapter will be coming soon!
> 
> In the meantime, feel free to follow me on Tumblr at fuck-me-barnes.tumblr.com :)


	6. Chapter 6

"He's been standing here for the past hour. He hasn't moved. Just staring." Natasha keeps her voice low, even though the man is at least two hundred yards away.

 

   
 _In the video, the man is shirtless, strapped to a chair in an empty room. Four men in lab coats are observing through a thick pane of glass. The man in the chair seems to be unconscious, his head tipped onto his chest, his long dark hair half-covering his face. There's some sort of apparatus on his head, some kind of helmet with wires looped into sensors on his temples, neck, and chest._

 _"Begin", Zola's voice commands, and one of the lab coats pushes a button on a panel. The lights in the observation room dim, and the figure in the chair is brought into clearer focus._  
  
 _"Project Winter Soldier has progressed. Subject has been regularly deprived of sleep in twenty-day cycles for a period of," he looks at his watch, "one hundred forty-seven days." Zola smiles at the camera. "The_ ubermensch _serum has allowed us to prolong the limits of human ability by roughly double that of a normal human being. Subject has also been exposed to repeated physical pain - most effective, as the programming in the cybernetic enhancement arm allows us to tap directly into his central nervous system." Here Zola giggles, as if delighted. "We don't have to so much as lift more than a finger to bring him to his knees as if we'd struck him." Behind him, another lab coat walks into the room with the unconscious man. "Our project has produced so much more for us, more than we'd ever imagined. Observe." He turns to watch._

 

 

Even at this distance, and even in the low light, Steve recognizes the figure before him, looking out over the ocean, on the edge of the pier.

"Bucky?" he tries to call out, but his voice betrays him, and it comes out in just above a whisper instead.

The man does not stir, stays with his back to them.

 

 

_The clip opens abruptly to a whimpering, sweating, pale Bucky restrained on an operating table. "You are all alone here, Sergeant Barnes. No one is coming to rescue you. No one is looking for you. They believe you dead." Zola's voice is calm, almost sing-song, as the bone saw starts whining. "He left you here, Sergeant Barnes, alone, for us to do with you what we will. You were nothing more than an inconvenience to him. A sidekick. A punchline. You are nothing to him. Just a discarded piece of trash by the roadside. He will never recover you."_

_Bucky screams as the bone saw meets his flesh, and the audio overmodulates, crackling loudly. The video distorts for a few seconds, loses focus and comes back in. "STEVE! PLEASE COME GET ME", Bucky babbles, "please come get me please come get me STEVE OH GOD STEVE PLEASE PLEASE COME GET ME PLEASE-" and here the audio cuts out, the video a few seconds later freezing on a frame of Bucky's mouth open in a silent horrified scream._

 

  
  
Natasha puts a hand on Steve's shoulder when he takes a step forward as if to walk over to the figure on the end of the dock. "Hang on. Those files. You read them. What they did to him."

"I didn't read everything. I saw some of the videos..." There's anger in his voice, sorrow on his face. "It was...some hard stuff to get through."

"As far as I can tell, Steve, I think their project succeeded. Somehow...they managed it." She frowns, nods he head towards the figure on the pier. "That's his body. But he's just...a shell."

Steve presses his lips together in a thin line. "I have to help him. He's in there somewhere."

"That's just it. I don't think he _is_." Sam speaks up from behind him. "It would explain a lot, wouldn't it? The phone calls. The...whatever it was that you saw the other night. And _this_ ," he points accusingly at the motionless man in front of them.

 

 

 _In the room, the man in the chair does not move. "We have created an eidolon. Our Japanese colleague Dr. Onizuka calls it_ ikiryō _." The lab coat leans down, observing the equipment and taking notes on a clipboard. "A living ghost. An astral projection." As Zola speaks, a mist begins to form slightly to the left of the man in the chair. The lab coat doesn't seem to notice. "We are attempting to guide it. Control the body, and control the spirit."_

_Behind him, a choked-off scream can be heard, as the man in the chair reaches up and grabs the lab coat by the throat and squeezes. Zola sighs. "Obviously, there is more work that needs to be done."_

 

 

"I just haven't been sleeping well..." Steve starts protesting weakly.

Sam shakes his head, cutting him off. "Dude, I _heard_ it. I heard it too."

Natasha sighs. "There was a whole division of Hydra that trafficked in the occult. Project Winter Soldier fell, at least partially, into that division. They didn't just want a super-soldier. They wanted a super-soldier and a perfect weapon. _Think_ , Steve. What's better than having a completely obedient man who can run faster, hit harder, endure longer? What if you could have all that and a completely untraceable spy? Someone who could leave their body, record information, and, if they so desired, drive their target mad? Hound them into suicide, or give them a heart attack on the spot?"

The phone rings.

All three of them flinch, and Steve fumbles in his jacket for his cell phone, the ringer shrill and loud in the quiet. 

 

In front of them, the man turns, unnaturally quickly, and starts to scream. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your patience in between updates! I hope you enjoy this next chapter - it's gonna get worse before it gets better ;)

Everyone jumps, even Natasha, at the unholy screech coming from the figure at the end of the dock. His face is obscured by the long, dark hair falling in tangles around his face. Steve is fairly certain he knows what lies underneath: empty black eyes instead of the sparkling blue he remembers, pale waxy skin, a gaping dark hole instead of a mouth - just like the figure he'd seen a few nights ago, in his bedroom. Bucky, but not Bucky. 

He hadn't brought his shield, and Sam hadn't brought his wings, but Natasha had come, as always, prepared for any eventuality. Pushing Steve aside, she curls her hand into a fist and fires something from one of her wrist gauntlets. It hits the figure and Steve half expects it to dissipate like the other one had. Instead, it crumples to the ground, twitching.

"Did you just _taser_ a _ghost_?" Sam hisses, as if he's barely holding back hysterical laughter. "Oh my god. Oh my _god_. Marry me. Marry me _right now_. I will _never_ find another woman like you."

 

 

Minutes later, they're standing around the man, who's been tied up rather securely in Steve's apartment.

"Okay, so it wasn't a ghost. My offer still stands." Sam shrugs, and takes a step back, flicking his eyes in Natasha's direction, who gives him a small, tense smile. The man - _Bucky_ \- is completely unconscious. Breathing, _alive_ , but unconscious.

"What's wrong with him?" Steve murmurs. "He should have woken up by now."

Before Natasha can reply, every phone in the room starts ringing at once.

 

 

_"Your captain will not save you, Sergeant Barnes. In fact, he does not want to save you. He traded your life for his. He gladly walked away and washed his hands of you. You were simply a means to an end for him. A minor inconvenience. You were worthless to him. Just a stepping stone on his way to greatness. He had no use for a protector. a brother, a lover...and certainly not one as damaged as you." Zola's voice is almost singsong, as he works on the arm. "You are ours."_

_A man enters the room. He looks remarkably like Steve. Tall. Light-haired. Light-eyed. Muscular. Bucky's eyes flit hopefully to him, but his brow is furrowed. "I know you," he whispers._

_The man smiles beatifically at Bucky. "Yes. You do. I came here to make sure you do everything the good doctor tells you to do. I'm leaving you here, with him. I don't need you anymore."_

 

 

The ringing gets louder, and all of them are frozen in place. Steve slowly looks at Sam, and then Natasha, and then taps the button on his phone to answer.

" _w h y d i d y o u l e a v e m e?_ " the voice howls, a distorted version of Bucky's voice, twisted with pain. They all turn in unison and stare at the man in the chair. He is still unconscious. Still breathing. But, Steve notices even in his distraction, Bucky's respiration has accelerated, he's nearly hyperventilating. 

Sam and Natasha's phones continue to ring incessantly. "My phone's not even on," Natasha says, staring at it as if hypnotized.

" _p l e a s e c o m e g e t m e p l e a a a a a s e_ ," and it's a deafening whine of pain, louder than the speaker on his phone can likely go.

"What do I _do_. What _can_ I do?" Steve shouts desperately. "I've got you. I've got you here _with_ me. Tell me how to _help_ you, Buck."

The screaming rises in pitch until all three of them are holding their ears.

"Bucky, please let me _try_!" Steve yells.

Abruptly, the line goes dead.

The phones stop ringing.

Everyone exhales the breath they were holding, shakily.

In the chair, Bucky does not stir. His breathing slows, gradually.

 

 

"You said you didn't get all the way through the files?" Natasha asks.

Steve scrubs his face with his hand. His eyes are burning. He's so tired, it takes him a moment to understand her. "The Winter Soldier project files? No, I didn't...I didn't have time."

"These things, what they did to him. All the torture, all the psychological experiments, testing the limits of physical pain. He had a strong will, Steve. Incredibly strong. It took them _years_ to fully break him. But when they did -" she sighs, sitting down in one of his armchairs. "When they did, they created a monster that none of them were expecting." 

Natasha reaches for one of the thick manila envelopes on the coffee table, and leafs through it quickly until she finds the one she's looking for. "He's able to leave his body. Whatever it is, they refer to it in turns as an _eidolon_ \- that's what Zola called it - and the rest of the team called it, alternately, _yurei_ , _onryō_ , or _ikiryo_. Whatever it is, whatever they turned him into, they tried to control it, by controlling _him_. Sometimes, it worked. But now that he's without his Hydra handlers...there's no one to program him, there's no one holding their _perfect weapon_." She spits the last two words out with such force and anger that Steve has to keep himself from recoiling.

"So now he's, what, haunting my house?"

Pressing her lips together, Natasha looks between Steve and Bucky for a long moment. "You know, Steve. There's no such thing as haunted places, or haunted houses. Only haunted _people_. I think, now, he's looking for vengeance. His brainwashing programming's breaking down, he doesn't know what's real anymore, and he's striking out blindly at whoever it is he thinks hurt him. Which brings him straight to you."

"He thinks _Steve_ is responsible for what happened to him?" Sam asks, incredulous. "That doesn't even make sense."

She nods. "No, but that's what they made him think. At least, that's what it showed in some of those videos they took. Hydra really did a number on him. He doesn't even seem to know when he is and when he isn't in his body anymore. I don't think he can control it."

"How do we stop it? How can we help him?" Steve asks quietly, staring at his friend, who, for all intents and purposes, seemed to be sleeping peacefully.

Sam shrugs helplessly. "I don't know." 

 

 

In the chair, the man begins to stir.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The man who looks remarkably like Steve - go ahead and google pictures of a young Robert Redford.  
> Oh hey, that's who played Alexander Pierce...  
> Yeah.
> 
> If you like what I've been writing so far, come find me on Tumblr at fuck-me-barnes.tumblr.com for more crying about Bucky/Steve, Bucky/Nat, and occasional creepy things :)


	8. Chapter 8

_"He's not dead. He can't be."_  
  
 _"Ah, but he is. See for yourself." The man, smiling, pushes a paper across the steel table and into his field of vision._ **A Nation Mourns Captain America's Death** _, the headline blares. He can make out a few of the other words here and there._ Heroic Sacrifice _._ Tragedy _._ Serving His Country _._

_"I don't believe you. I'd...I'd know. I'd have felt it," he whimpers nonsensically._

_The man crosses the room, turns on a radio. "And in our continued coverage...the death of Captain America, Steven Grant Rogers, who heroically gave his life to prevent..." the radio hisses and cracks._

_"No. He's not dead. He's. Not._ Dead _." The man grits his teeth, and the lights begin to flicker. "It's a trick. It's a_ trick _. It's a trick!" He begins to struggle against his bonds, but the thick metal cuffs hold him fast. "STEVE!" he screams. "STEVE!" His voice breaks. "He'll come and get me, he always does he'll come for me, he_ will _, you'll see, please, Steve, please come get me, please come get me, please don't be dead,_ please come get me _."_

_The radio dissolves into static, a lightbulb blows out, and the man in the chair struggles, screaming._

 

 

The man in the chair stirs.

 

 

The room tenses. The restraints they have on him - Natasha's - were meant for humans, were never meant to restrain a cyborg anything. 

"Get ready," Natasha murmurs, dropping into a defensive stance.

Sam slowly, carefully, draws his gun from the holster on his hip. 

Behind them, they can hear Steve shifting into position.

 

 

The man in the chair stirs. A white mist begins to form behind him, insubstantial as a haze of cigarette smoke, at first. 

 

 

_"Steve? You're alive?"_

_The blonde man smiles. It's a soft smile, dripping pity._

_"They told me you were dead."_

_He shrugs. "Guess I am."_

 

 

The man in the chair stirs and the mist coalesces into a vague, humanoid shape. His breathing begins to speed up. 

Without warning, the television bursts on at top volume, the radio in the kitchen blaring big band music. All the phones in the house begin to ring, loud and jangling. Sam Jumps, and Natasha takes a reflexive step backward, but doesn't let the man in the chair out of her line of sight.

Behind them, they feel more than hear a heavy thud as Steve drops to the ground, his shield clattering to the floor.

 

 

_The blonde man enters the room, and smiles beatifically at him._

_"I...know you," the man in the chair says to him, in childlike tones._

_"Who are you talking to?" asks the portly, piggish Swiss man, whose name he has now forgotten, too. "There's no one else in the room."_

_Puzzled, the man in the chair turns to look back at the familiar blonde man, but he's gone._

 

 

The cacophony of electronics stops, and ringing silence is left in its place instead.

Steve sits up, slowly. 

 "His _eyes_ , what's wrong with his _eyes_ -" Natasha shrieks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the relative shortness of the chapter. More's coming. Promise ;)


	9. Chapter 9

Steve's eyes are bleeding, bloody tears tracking down his cheeks.

"S...Steve?" Natasha asks, her voice low and shaken.

 He doesn't respond, just stares straight ahead.

 

 

_You've known me your whole life. Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. You're my friend. I'm not going to fight you._

_Y O U ' R E M Y M I S S I O N_

_Then finish it. 'Cause -_

 

 

It would be easy, _so easy_ , to just give up. To let him take over. To let him end this.

He suspected something was wrong with Bucky back in '45, back in Azzano, those nights where Bucky hadn't needed much sleep, the mornings where he'd wake up and his bruises would be lighter, his scrapes meshed together and halfway healed already.

From the way Bucky'd grown quieter, his reflexes sharper, his accuracy eerie in its precision. His blue eyes, normally alight with laughter, gone half-dead. But he had been too much of a coward to ask what they'd done to him in there, the one time in his life that his courage had failed him. And Bucky had never volunteered anything. They just didn't talk about it.

It would be no less than he deserved, Steve thinks distantly, if he were to die at the hands of the one person who meant the most to him in the entire world, the one person he'd left behind in a ravine in the snow. Let Bucky have his vengeance, obliterate and destroy every person who had wronged him, every person whose hands he had suffered at. That's what he wants, isn't it?

And who else was left alive for him to destroy, now, but him. His best friend and his biggest betrayer. It was the end of the line, for both of them. And Bucky wouldn't stop, couldn't stop, until all that pain and rage was unleashed upon those he thought were his tormentors.

 

 

_Y O U L E F T M E_

_T H I S W A S Y O U R F A U L T_

_t_ _he voice in his head howls and rages_

_and it hurts, oh god, it hurts **so much**_

 

 

For a moment, he almost lets go. For a moment, he almost gives in to the darkness, to the maelstrom in his head that is Bucky trying to get in.

But then he remembers. Zola's face, flickering on a screen, taunting him. His voice, distorted and disembodied, over tinny speakers. The computer. A flash drive. Bragging about his immortality, being a god in the machine. How they were both men out of time, and Zola's taunting laugh.

Zola had never expected to die in that strike team bombing in the ruins of Camp Lehigh. He knew what was coming, had probably been the one to order it in the first place. Zola wasn't just stalling him and Natasha. He was waiting for a program to finish uploading.

 

 

_P L E A S E C O M E G E T M E_

_Bucky, you have to see - let me show you, Buck - I didn't_

 

 

 

"Bucky." His voice is a shattered croak, blood rivulets running down his face like tears. "I didn't leave you. I only want to help you, Buck. You gotta believe -" Steve starts crawling over to the hyperventilating man in the chair "- I've been trying to get back to you this whole time. I thought you were dead. When you died, I died too. We were both dead, Buck, and I just wanted," he closes his eyes for a moment, trying to get control of himself. "I tried to go after you, don't you see? _I thought you were dead and I wanted to be with you_."

"We haunted each other. All this time. I've been trying to find you, and you've been trying to find me, and neither of us knew - _we were haunting each other_."

Bucky's eyes flutter open, a startled blue. 

Steve collapses to the ground a second time.

 

 

The first thing he sees coming out of the darkness in his head is the barrel of a pistol. Natasha has a gun to his head. It feels like she's already shot him straight through the skull, his head aches so much. Nat's face swims into focus and he can see her eyes wide, her nostrils flaring in terror.

"Don't shoot. Don't shoot, don't shoot, don't shoot. 'S me. Steve. It's me. Stand down," he slurs, his entire body feeling loose and disjointed. She keeps the gun trained on him, frozen. " _Stand down, Agent Romanov_ ," he barks out, and that snaps her out of it. 

Natasha shakily lowers the weapon. Sam, standing to her left, holding a gun of his own, has it trained on the man in the chair, whose eyes are open and wild, flitting about the room looking at everything and nothing. Sam's other arm is holding the shield. Steve nods at him, tries to manage a gentle smile in his direction. "You can stand down too."

Once Sam lowers his gun, Steve glances back at Natasha, who's visibly trying to compose herself.

"Nat. You still have that flash drive we brought out of Zola's lab?"

Slowly, she nods. 

"You ever put it in a computer? Here, or anywhere else?" 

Natasha shakes her head no. "Didn't need to. All of SHIELD's docs were already made public in their entirety. There wasn't anything in there we didn't already kno -" she cuts off. "Oh _shit_."

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recommended listening: Fever Ray, "I'm Not Done"
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg3l3Hmiu4E
> 
> It's a good Ghost!Bucky song and what I pretty much listened to on repeat while writing this chapter. ;)

" _We haunted each other. All this time. I've been trying to find you, and you've been trying to find me, and neither of us knew_ - we were haunting each other."

 

 

He remembers

remembers

remem

 

in the room the blonde man smiles at him and says, "don't worry, it will be okay" as they break another bone and

 _ah very good a comminuted fracture!_ someone says cheerily on his right side

he can't see them, he can't see any of them, his head boarded and restrained.

all he can see is the blonde man in front of him as he screams his throat raw, begging for him to get him out of here, get him off this table

(the blonde man isn't always there but when he is he's hushing him or sometimes looking sadly at him)

but the man never touches him even though he reaches out towards him, he never helps him even though he watches everything they do to him

 

in the room there are computers, telephones, machines and monitors

no windows no sun no sky

 

 

he is beginning to forget things.

 

 

the blonde man is important, though.

he remembers that.

 

 

_what is_

_his name_

 

_what is_

_my name_

 

 

once while they are sewing stitches into his skin he stares at a red telephone on the wall so intensely he feels lightheaded.

or maybe it's just the pain.

if he could just get to the telephone.

if he could just call.

who. who is there to call. he searches his brain for names, numbers, and finds nothing. 

 

the phone

rings.

 

 

a memory surfaces: two boys in a tree. 

"what if I fall?" the blonde boy asks him, doubt and fear on his face, his spindly arms clinging to the branch.

"I won't let you fall," he replies, smirking, "c'mon, let's climb higher". 

 

 

the blonde boy is not, in the end, the one who falls.

 

 

there's a jolt and a drop and he's clinging to something and someone is saying "take my hand"

and he's telling the blonde boy "I won't let you fall"

 

(this is a lie. he lets him fall. he watches the blonde man fall, in fire, in smoke, and all he can do is watch as he plunges towards the water)

 

and so he falls, instead, the heartstopping exhilaration of a sudden sickening drop, a scream ripping out of his mouth as he goes

his limbs flailing as if to fly

the surge in his chest as if his heart were trying to leap from his rib cage and rejoin the man above,

the train moving, passing by, and

still he is falling, falling forever, always falling, and who could have known? 

 

the one who he hadn't let fall had let him fall, instead.

(in the end, they both fall.)

he laughs while screaming.

it doesn't matter.

no one hears him.

they're gone by the time he hits the ground.

 

 

frozen and

frozen

and frozen.

 

 

sometimes the blonde man is there, watching sadly in the corner, reaching for him, but so far away.

sometimes no one is there and he reaches up to the tiny window of the chamber, a hand to the glass, searching for him

 _where, where are you_  

and sometimes the blonde man is the one to direct them to put him in the chamber himself.

 

sometimes the blonde man weeps, but he only ever weeps when no one else seems to see him.

 _come get me, buck_ , he says. _please come get me_.

he doesn't know who the man is talking to. the asset has no name.

 

 

the red telephone rings and a lab coat picks it up. 

_hello_

_hello_

_hello? who's there who is this_

_bad connection_ , they say with an annoyed shrug, and hang up

and he watches from somewhere near the ceiling, his body below.

 

 

on the bridge, he falls.

on the bridge, the blonde man falls.

 

 

the man on the bridge.

 _I knew him_.

but which one of them was he?

he does not remember.

 

 

(later, there is a different kind of falling, a soaring, swooping thing, two pairs of lips meeting in the darkened bed of a room.

hands twined with hands, clean sweat on skin, breathing in each others' air in little gasps and cries.

it's the good kind of falling.

the kind that feels like flying.)

 

 

the man hits him but he barely feels it.

the man says _your work has been a gift to mankind_.

the man says _you shaped the century_.

the man says _and I need you to do it one more time_.

behind him the blonde man shakes his head sadly, his eyes swimming with tears.

one _last_ time, is what he's saying.

he's saying, you aren't expected to come back from this. 

he's saying, you're no longer an asset.

you're a liability.

_unstable. erratic._

 

 

he doesn't know where he's going.

he doesn't know where he's been.

all he knows is, the blonde man keeps begging him to come to him.

every time he tries he's still the same distance away.

 

 

 _we were haunting each other_ , he hears, and his eyes fly open: he is in a white room, hands tied, feet tied, shoddy restraints, and as he fights to break free he hears the blonde man say

 

 

"Let's give the ghost what it wants." He's moving towards the computer, something small and silver in his hand. 

"Steve, don't -" the red woman warns, but it's too late, he's put the silver thing in a port on the side and seconds later he hears the voice, the voice of his nightmares, the voice of ten thousand days of torture and ruin speaking.

" _Did you think you could get rid of me that easily, Captain Rogers?_ " says Zola, triumphant. " _Cut one head off -_ " 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much, friends, for your patience in waiting for this installment! I had intended to get this story completed by Halloween, but unfortunately, life got in the way, and thus...it took far longer than expected. But here we are! One installment away from the finish! 
> 
> I appreciate you sticking with me, and I like to think that every time one of you opens up this story in a browser tab in the dark, in the wee hours of the morning, somewhere, onryō!Bucky makes a phone ring.

Ever since he'd been woken up from the ice, Steve Rogers had smiled only rarely. The past four years had been like running on autopilot. Pure muscle memory. Inside, he was still lying there, on the floor of the crashed plane, cold, unthawed. There were commercials on the television about it all the time. Depression, they said it was. You could take a little pill for it, be happy again. Easy. Modern miracles.

The pills didn't work, of course. No more than the alcohol did if he tried to get drunk. And, he figured, this wasn't as simple as a chemical solution to a chemical problem, either. Half his heart was missing, and no technology could bring it back, and he was sick with it, and the sickness was never, ever going to be purged from his body. He was walking wounded and trying not to bleed on anybody, is all. 

When he'd sleep, which was not as often as he'd liked, he'd dream of Bucky. 

 

 

_"I dreamed of you. For a thousand years, I dreamed of you. They tried to shut me away in the little cage in my mind, but I brought you with me, Stevie, even when you left me, you were still with me." Bucky smiles, his grey-blue eyes shining brightly in the low twilight. They're sitting up on the fire escape of their old Brooklyn apartment, Bucky's in a sleeveless white shirt and work pants, leaning against the brick. He's so close, Steve can smell the familiar scent of his hair pomade hanging in the air between them. He reaches out, caressing Steve's cheek, and it's so vivid he can feel the calluses on Buck's fingertips. "I knew you'd come get me. Even in death, you'd come for me."_

_Now Bucky's in his Army uniform, they're standing in the alley in Brooklyn. "We died, Stevie. You were dead. I was dead."  He leans in, and he's in the blue peacoat he was wearing when he fell, and they're up on the mountain in the Alps, waiting for the train. "We were both supposed to be dead."_

_He's dressed in black as dark as the grave, his too-long hair falling in his eyes, and his metal arm glints in the dim city lights as he pulls Steve in, wraps its chill against the small of his back. Bucky's flesh hand reaches up, rests on the nape of his neck as he presses their lips together. He kisses him fiercely and it's hungry, starving; tastes like fresh cotton candy, tastes like the smoke from his cigarettes, tastes like terror and blood, his five o'clock shadow rubbing Steve's face raw._

_"_ _Why could they not leave us in peace?" he groans, pressing his body to Steve's, but he's cold, so cold, so_ cold _-_

And then the phone would ring. Bucky's voice, always begging him  _please come get me_. Howling and shrieking and dragging him back awake again, or maybe he'd been awake the whole time and had only imagined it.

 

 

" _\- two more will grow in its place!_ " Zola crackles cheerily, his image flickering on the laptop, rendered in shades of acid green.

"Man, shut the hell up," Sam says, grimacing and moving towards the computer, but Steve beats him to it.

Zola laughs and it sounds horrid, static coming through the speakers.

"Steve", says Bucky, his voice low and gravelly, and everyone in the room freezes and turns towards him. "You were dead. I was dead. We were supposed to be dead."

 

 

_The water creeps up over his feet, shockingly cold. He can feel his toes already starting to lose all sensation. He was still alive. Intact. Not so much as a scratch on him. He wasn't supposed to have survived that. He was supposed to have died on impact when the plane hit the water. Or, failing that, the bombs strapped to the plane were supposed to go off. Maybe they had, he supposes calmly. Maybe even that wasn't enough to kill him._

_He decides it's best to drown, instead. Perhaps that will work. Drowning. Anything to take him out of this world, which had lost all meaning the minute James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes had fallen away from his outstretched hand._

_Steve removes himself from the pilot's chair. As an afterthought, he picks up his shield, and holds it over his midsection as he lies down on the floor, in the two inches of water already collected there, a token gesture in the hopes that it might help weigh him down somehow. He forces himself to stay still, focusing instead on keeping his breathing deep and even. While he waits to be covered, Steve thinks of Bucky, his heart the only part of him that feels any ache as the rest of his body goes slowly numb._

_Behind his eyelids, he can almost see him - can almost smell him, hear his laughter._ I'm coming for you, Buck, _he promises his dead friend._ I'll be with you real soon. _He imagines reaching out his hand to Bucky, pictures the familiar feel of his skin, the scent of his hair, focusing every last bit of his considerable will to try and rejoin his friend in death._

 

 

 

"...Bucky?" Steve breathes.

The man in the chair stares at him, a guarded look of confusion on his face. "Steve. We were supposed to be dead. Stevie..." He glances warily at all three of them in turn, down at his hands, and then back up with dawning horror at Steve, "Where am I? What...what did they do to me?"

He begins to struggle against the shoddy restraints keeping him in place, and breaks them, the handcuffs clattering to the ground. Quick as lightning and steady as steel, Natasha points her gun squarely at him. "Don't you move."

Bucky doesn't so much as acknowledge her, keeps his eyes focused entirely on the blonde man before him.

"Stevie. What did they do to me. What did they do?" he nearly wails, and 

 

 

_His hand, pressing to the glass, as the cold creeps in._

_His hand, reaching outstretched to touch him._

_Frozen and_

_frozen_

_and frozen._

_Two boys together, in the ice._

_Their hands touch and their fingers twine together, while their bodies are both sleeping, through time and thousands of miles apart._

 

_I only ever wanted to be with you, Stevie._

_I know, Buck. I came for you. I always have, I always will, even if we're dead, or if this is the end of the world._

 

 

 

" _Hydra_  did this to you. _He_ did this to you, Buck. What happened to you...it was _him_. Zola." Steve nods towards the computer screen, the rendering of Zola's face flickering, grinning at them, still cackling. "He engineered the whole thing. Tortured you for days and nights for years, made you into his own personal science experiment. Stripped you of your memories. Turned you into a weapon. Took you from me."

Steve walks slowly towards Bucky now, who's gone still, listening to him talk with an indecipherable look on his face. "Zola told you...he told you it was  _my_ fault. And maybe it _was_ , maybe I'm just as responsible for everything that happened to you. I didn't go back for you. I didn't come get you, because I was too busy trying to come _after_ you. You were all I had, and I thought you were _dead_ , and I wanted to _be with you_. I only ever wanted to be with you," he sobs out, "I'm sorry, Bucky. I'm sorry."

Bucky releases a shuddering breath, his shoulders slumping in for a moment. "I remember. I _remember..._."

"We gotta put a stop to him, Buck. But we gotta do this together," he pleads, reaching out for him.

" _I am afraid you can do nothing, Sergeant Barnes_ ," Zola crows, the screen glitching as his face moves. " _As you can see, I am now...immortal._ " 

Bucky turns his head and looks at the computer screen for a long moment, Zola's face going from smug to afraid when he sees the intensity of that gaze. He looks back at the man before him, blue eyes wet with tears. Abruptly he _grins_ , a humourless shark smile full of teeth, the kind of predatory smile that would chill anyone in their right mind.

Except for Steve, who's seen it before, a thousand times, awake and asleep. And he matches it with one of his own.

 

"Steve", he rumbles in a gravelly voice. "Take my hand."

 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, as ever, for your patience in waiting for this installment! 
> 
> Remember how I said this would be the last chapter in this tale?
> 
> ...I lied. 
> 
> I went for unlucky 13, instead.

"I got you, Buck," he says breathlessly, and Steve reaches out without hesitation to tangle their fingers together. Bucky's hand is cool, and dry, and soft where it's not callused. The same hands he remembers lying across his forehead in Brooklyn when he was sick, running down his sides and over his ribs when he was well.

Steve has been out of the ice for three years now. It occurs to him that Bucky may also, in collective time, be in roughly the same situation. When he looks at Bucky's hand, twined with his, he sees dirt under his fingernails. Steve wonders, wildly, hysterically, if it was the same dirt that had been there when he fell. Likely it was. He can't imagine that Hydra was overly concerned with personal grooming. The room spins, and Steve feels nauseous, suddenly.

"I _missed_ you, Stevie," Bucky hums, his blue eyes wild and wide. "I missed you so much, I dreamed of you for a thousand years. I dreamed of you even when I couldn't remember you. I slept for so long," he whispers, raspy. " _So long_. You were with me even when you weren't. I stopped being scared, because I could see you behind my eyelids every time I closed 'em. And I saw what you did. I _know_ what you did, in the plane, in the ocean."

"Tried to come after you", Steve protests thinly, sounding weak to his own ears. 

Bucky shakes his head, the grin on his face still intense. "I _know_ , babydoll, I know that you did. And _you_ slept, and _I_ slept, and I was with you, and you were with me. Don't you remember? While we were sleeping? I remember, now."

"He's completely insane", Nat growls, a thin edge of bare panic in her voice. "Get away from him, Steve."

  
 

 

**Lead doctor's treatment notes, 1953:**

_The asset is not allowed to sleep._

_In early trials, it was found that whenever the asset is granted rest in between missions, he is nearly uncontrollable when he awakes. Due to the accelerated healing effects of the serum, his brain attempts to repair itself the longer he is asleep - he will remember his name, and display the ability to recall large portions of his former life. The asset often reacts with unpredictable violence towards others and itself if the brain is allowed to enter anything more than Stage 2 sleep. **Use extreme caution**. Recommend scopolamine dosage for emergency situations wherein sleep is unavoidable; otherwise, it is my professional opinion that when not in use, the asset be placed in cryogenic stasis in between missions rather than in a cell, and wiped upon awakening as a safety measure. This will prevent further brain damage while also retarding any of the subject's brain's attempts to repair itself._

_\- E. Onizuka_

 

 

 

"You helped him, Stevie." His voice is rough from disuse, and he pulls Steve closer with his right hand, which is shaking violently. Bucky's left hand reaches up to his face, caresses his cheek gently with cold metal fingers. His eyes look grey as a stormy sea. "You shouldn't have helped him." His shark-smile goes soft, wistful. "You shouldn't have _helped_ him."

Sam and Natasha stare, frozen.

"What?" Sam says.

Zola laughs from the computer screen. " _I told you. I am immortal. And now - now, thanks to you, Captain Rogers, I have access to the entire world._ "

"He's immortal, and we're both ghosts, Stevie baby, see? _He's immortal and we are ghosts_. It's gonna go on, on and _on_ like this forever. I can't-" Bucky stops, runs his dry tongue over cracked, chapped lips. "Can't do it without you, see, I need you."

 

 

 

After the helicarrier crash, the asset found his way to a safe house and slept for four days.

He had not slept in roughly seventy years.

No one came and got him, because there was no one  _left_  to come and get him, not really. His handler was dead, and Hydra was in disarray, and it was assumed - and for some, secretly,  _hoped_  - that the asset had perished in the disaster on the Potomac. He remained at the abandoned safe house for several more days, vomiting, shaking, shivering, and sleeping, detoxing from the chemical cocktail they'd often injected him with to keep him compliant.

When he dreamed, he was alone, and this was distressing to the asset for reasons he could not fully articulate.

 

 

 

 **Research assistant's notes, Feb 1969:**  

_One doctor, two aides, and a handler have been terminated by the asset in an outburst this afternoon. Subject was contained within a secure, locked room at the time, with handlers and staff on the outside. It is not known how subject was able to reach them in order to harm them._

_Recommendation: Only remove asset from cryostasis for missions in cases of extreme urgency. The asset continues to be dangerously unstable and erratic, and has been placed in cryostasis in order to prevent further damage to handlers and staff. It is our hope that the cryostasis will further retard long-term memory function. Termination of project may be necessary if subject continues to display disturbing behaviour._

 

 

“A bullet in the barrel of your best guy’s gun”, he hisses at Steve. “Remember that? Well. I’m the bullet, Stevie. You’re the gun. I’m the one that breaks the skin, tears them up inside. You’re the trigger. Point, aim, fire." Bucky makes a gun with his thumb and index finger, pointing it towards the computer monitor, Zola's rendered face on the screen. He jerks it as if firing an imaginary pistol. "Boom.”

Steve reaches up to his temples, rubbing them gently. His head is throbbing, suddenly, his vision blurring.

"I ain't gonna hurt you, Stevie. I just. Can't hold all this together much longer. C'mon, babydoll. Come with me. We ain't got much time." Bucky sounds like the old Bucky, the one from Before. Not the one who was screaming at him on the Helicarrier, the assassin who didn't recognize him, but the Bucky from Brooklyn, the one who kept him warm in the winter before the war, the one who'd called him _babydoll_ and _sweetheart_ in the wee hours of the morning, moving over him, panting in his ear.

The two men turn towards Zola's flickering, sickly green image on the monitor, their hands linked, shoulders squared back. Ready to fight. " _What do you think you are doing, Soldier? Who in the world do you think you are?_ "

"I am what you made me," Bucky says to Zola, his voice dripping with contempt. "C'mon, Steve," he turns and looks at him, pleading. "Lemme in."

Seconds later, the two men drop to the floor, unconscious.

 

This time, he doesn't fight it. He lets him in. 

_Are we dead?_

Bucky's face shifts. He's at once the 9-year-old boy that Steve remembers, dirt-smudged and grinning on the porch stoop, and the man in the war, his face half-obscured by shadow, only lit by the embers at the tip of his cigarette in a frigid tent. _We weren't dead then and we aren't dead now, Stevie. Not really. We're just ghosts. We never woke up. We're still sleeping. We're still under the ice, you and I._

 _It's not an AI, not like JARVIS is. It's a simulation._ Steve reaches out for him, touches his face, and it ripples and warps under his hand, making him shudder.  _But it's possible it could...become more than that. We have to trap it in its own loop, so it keeps replaying itself. He's a simulation, but we're real. We're real, we're real, we're_ real _. We have to dismantle the simulation._

 _Real as anything ever is,_  and he feels, rather than hears, Bucky's laughter. _I slept to escape what they were doing to my body, and you slept to come find me, and here we are. You don't get it, do you. This is just an echo. This is who I was. I'm only as real as a nightmare, Stevie. I can only be real, here, in our sleep. Going back in my body, it's hard. I don't think I can do it again._

 

 

"Are they...what the _hell_ is going on?" Sam asks, lowering his weapon and rushing to kneel at the two men on the floor. "Steve? STEVE!" He starts to shake him, but the blonde doesn't stir. Neither does the brunet.


End file.
